It was a dark and stormy night when 'Tales From Beyond A Darkened Sky' first emerged on the airwaves of Ace radio. It began as a radio show in which Ghost introduced 2 Old Time Radio episodes as a one off show. Inspired by the British tradition of telling a Ghost story for Christmas and Ghost's love of the genre and the medium.

 

Ace radio was already hosting Ghost's other show 'Screams from the Charnel House', 2 hours of post punk, Goth and darkwave each Tuesday night.

 

Initially the show wasn't called Tales From Beyond A Darkened Sky at all, but simply 'Ghost Stories for Christmas' and was intended as a one off. It proved so popular though that Ghost and station Manager Mark Alexander decided to run a regular, weekly, 1 hour slot of the same format on the station. To begin with Ghost aired more Old Time Radio shows, especially the classic 'Dark Fantasy' and 'Halls of Fantasy' anthologies. It wasn't long, however, before he began to approach modern audio drama creators and ask if he could air their work. The first two to sign up were '19 Nocturn Boulevard' which became the backbone of TFBADS for several years, and 'Chatterbox Audio Theatre' which provided some of the most talked about episodes to be aired on TFBADs. This also presented a slight challenge, since Ghost wanted to air 'Surfacing' by Chatterbox Theatre – a terrifically frightening and incredibly well acted 3 part mini-series, however, the 3rd and concluding episode lasted for longer than an hour. The problem was solved when the station agreed to give TFBADs an extended 2 hour show instead of a single hour. The new 2 hour format proved popular enough that the show was permanently moved to 2 hours in length.

 

Sadly Ace Radio closed down due to the untimely and unexpected death of station owner Mark Alexander. After a period of mourning Ghost took the show to new home 1Radio, where it initially returned to being a 1 hour show. As co-incidence would have it, the show was again extended to 2 hours after airing a repeat of 'Surfacing'. Arrangements had been made to extend the show for one night to allow the finale of the repeat. Again this proved popular enough that the show was permanently extended. By now an increasing number of modern producers had signed up to have their work aired on the show.

 

1Radio remained the home of Tales From Beyond A Darkened Sky until it closed it's doors in 2014 when Ghost was approached by Edd of A1 Radio and offered a slot there for both his TFBADS and Screams From the Charnel House formats. The show moved to A1 Radio where it was broadcast for 2 hours each week for 2 years before Ghost left A1 Radio on extended hiatus due to a lack of time and far too many other projects. The parting of he ways remains amicable and Ghost may yet return to A1 Radio in the future, although there are no immediate plans to do so.

For now, TFBADs will remain a combination of hub and review site for Horror, SF and Dark Fantasy audio drama, both new and old.